Thursday, October 27, 2011

Back aches and doctors and MRIs oh my!

We're off to the doctors again this afternoon, to see a specialist from Childrens Memorial regarding Catherine's back ache. I haven't been blogging in a while because of this. When stressed, I somehow find other things to do it seems, like pace and worry.

Catherine has moderate scoliosis (25 degree lumbar/thoracic curves) and increasing back pain. Her ortho told me that back ache isn't common with scoliosis at all, unless it's pretty severe, which her's thankfully is not. But her pain in the morning and night, as well as leg pain, concerned him enough that he sent her for 6 weeks of physical therapy (ostensibly to strengthen the back--didn't work--made it worse) and then for an MRI last week.

The MRI itself was nothing short of scary to me as Catherine has a pelvis full of 18 platinum coils from a surgery 6 years ago. Although all the doctors confirmed it was perfectly safe to do an MRI with platinum coils, half way through the procedure she started complaining of stomach pain. The tech adjusted something on the MRI and that made it better, but I was sufficiently freaked out from it. Nothing seemed to come from it afterwards and she was fine.

The MRI came back showing, well, nothing abnormal at all. That's great, except she's still in pain every morning, and her legs hurt sometimes so much she doesn't really want to get out of bed. Once she's up and about, things sort of fade away, unless she's playing the cello, or sitting in a chair without a back, and then it flares up again. Regardless, he tells me she should not have back pain at her age. So we're off to see a super duper Ortho doc for a second opinion.